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I see the derailleur lived on in spite of everything.
Are you sure Lenz is done? Website is still up although very out of date
I was always impressed Lenz managed to make aluminum frames in house in Colorado- and had some serious hydroforming tube shapes- not sure if that was in house or not. I contacted him probably 10 years ago asking if he’d do a custom run of frames but wasn’t interested.
I Think the ski bikes did pretty well
Lenz is still very much active, at least according to their Facebook:
I’ve always kinda wanted one of their FS SS models, but it doesn’t make any sense for me.
Very interesting observations. I'm not into finance and all I can say is, as Austrian and observer of our news landscape, KTM's bankruptcy surely has been on the front of a lot of publications and the hows and whys have been widely (and wildly) debated. Ebikes never came up in all the debates and speculations. More the private wealth of Pierer, much like the YT/Flossmann debate.
I vividly remember a conversation at a businessdinner I've been to as mtb-representative, with a sports official who knew Pierer personally. We discussed land access and ebikes (classic stereotypes: problematic land access in Austria, people not fit enough to get into the mountains on there own). During that it came up that Pierer disliked ebikes for that very reasons but couldn't turn down the enormous business case.
Reading your blog gives me the impression that despite having a perfect business case to diversify his groups brands, greed and hubris (he sewed KTM bicycles for the brand rights he sold them before) lead him to enter a market he didn't fully understand with the marketing and financing power his successful brands entitled him to, and failed because he couldn't carry the weight he lifted.
If we're doing predictions, I'm concerned about Lynskey. They've been doing some massive sales in the last year on their Ti frames.
The elder Lynskey just passed away, so change may be eminent, but too-cheap has been the MO over there since day 1…
Lynsksey’s pricing model has befuddled domestic ti bike manufacturing insiders for decades.
They regularly sell frames for less than the price of the materials they claim they are made out of. Unless the family has some crazy backdoor connections to drop pieces from an aerospace contractor dirt cheap, it’s always been something besides margin on frames keeping the lights on there…
Lynskey frames always seemed to be on massive discount at CRC several years ago
Question for the masses: Who is still dealing with a massive glut of inventory? Who has worked through everything (or nearly everything) and is primed for a good 2026?
We can talk about companies, or types of companies. For instance, Commencal seems to have a glut of stuff to still work through whereas local bike shops around me seem to be managing things fairly well.
If enough people chime in we might be able to paint an abstraction of what is really happening out there. As always, it feels pretty opaque from my POV.
trek lots of
specialized, lots of, but depending on models
cube as usual not much (they work mostly with preorders only)
This might not add a lot to the discussion but when I was told by someone in Trek ANZ sales that they had more than 75,000 bikes in warehouses alone by the end of COVID, they also made the comment that, in a lot of cases, shipping unwanted bikes off to other markets just to get rid of them was prohibitively expensive if the brake levers couldn't easily be reversed.
It's possible that they've only recently managed to clear out the last of the Gen5 Slash. It's still listed on the AU website, but sold out.
On the Commencal front its bikes like these that will sit around forever. This came out December of 2022. By the time it was shipping transmission was pretty standard for GX builds. So this is a bike with an old drivetrain and a previous generation Ohlins fork. So you are getting a "new" bike with previous generation parts. I have to think this stuff is never going to move and every month it gets worse and worse.
https://www.commencal.com/us/en/BT3MTRV5OHEU2.html
I got chatting to someone who worked for Meridia at a trail centre, apparently they think that the new owners of Nukeproof are sitting on a huge glut of old frames.
Scott are clearly struggling to clear stock too judging by the 50%+ discounts that are still out there. Similarly to the post above me, these are gx axs builds, previous gen suspension.
trek just announced that they remove older gen models from the public website, but they are still orderable
That sounds like a surefire way of getting rid of that excess inventory.
*Edit: I get it though, not wanting to have old stuff shown next to your latest and greatest on your website. Just seems counter-productive when said old stuff needs to move.
I always found that the easiest way to move old inventory is to have the new item next to it at full price...
Trek hasn’t been aggressively discounting at any point in the last few years. I assume they a) want to keep a “premium brand” image and b) don’t want to contribute to a race to the bottom. Might have to hit up the lbs and see if I can sweet talk a deal on one of these “available to order” bikes in the off season.
Seriously? Trek has been absolutely heavily discounting in Canada. 40-50% off 9.8 slashes. 30-40% off a bunch of rails. Good deals on Gen 5 Fuel Ex's where there were any left. Maybe they don't want to blow up the US Market?
I will say, I think Trek has done a pretty good job of getting rid of their oldest inventory - except the Slash SE, which I have no idea why it ever existed anyway (it came out right around the same time the gen 6 did and it's $10,000....).
Trek has definitely had some moving inventory style sales recently. This spring I picked up a Roscoe for a little more than half off.
Most brands are still burning off a lot of fat. Mainly in the MTB/E-MTB and city/urban categories. Road and Gravel are pretty healthy.
It's not the "Hot" bikes that are the problem. It's all the other bikes(goofy component specs, old models etc) and I don't think that will change in the next year or so. The popular models are going to be up near full price again soon though.
I'm amazed there's not been more warehouse fires TBH. You know, those pesky night shift staff smoking in the cardboard store......
I guess that’s a new thing. At one point they had old slashes at like full price next to the new ones. Even in winter last year I don’t think they were breaking 25 percent off when many brands had been doing 50-60 for some time.
With the new Fuel ex/mx/lx about to be released in 2-3 days, that will be 3 generations on sale at the same time.
The Path in Orange County had a fairly strange scenario, that seemed like a drawn out location swap more than anything. Basically they made a new location, that would function as the 'normal' bike shop... And the old location became an 'outlet' store to sell clearance items and it just had a shit ton of stuff for a while.
They recently blew most of that out, whatever is left, and are now closing the old 'outlet' store, saying there is not enough inventory left over to justify the location. Again, it really just sounds like a prolonged location swap where the old space was useful until it wasn't and they finally didn't renew the lease or whatever.
If the numbers are in any way interesting to you. They opened the new store at the end of 2023. And ran both stores (they are literally a mile apart at most) in tandem up until now. Think it's closing on the 10th. Otherwise the Path itself has always been doing well, with a centralized location in Orange County and carrying many of the biggest names including Pivot. They be selling ~10k e-bikes all day in the OC.
I bought one of the ski bikes when I had a broken foot and couldn't snowboard. It was fun. You could tell that it was built by someone with a gravity background. It was stout.
Stif Cycles (a UK retailer with a reasonable sized online business and even produced their own frames for a while) are having a closing down sale.
Bugger.
I brought my 1st full sus bike from them back in 1995!
Yeah, it's a real shame, they've been around forever.
Fox reports earnings after the close. Not expecting anything major, but they remain a solid benchmark for the space. I’ll cover it.
Quick aside: after talking to a few private credit guys, it's becoming clear that the smaller the company, the more pain they're feeling...regardless of industry. That might seem obvious, but for many private companies under $50–100M in revenue, key profitability metrics have noticeably compressed over the last 3–4 years. Tariff concerns have eased somewhat, but they still hit these smaller players harder, especially those already operating on thin margins.
Worth noting because Fox is large and public, with structural advantages most bike industry operators don't have. If anyone wants to dive deeper into the public/private mismatch, let me know.
Cheers.
Wait I thought Robot killed you. Yes, please dive deep.
Im certainly curious about the Fox details. Specifically pealing off the automotive numbers and looking at some of their other non-suspension brands. On the surface it seems like Fox is still a market leader in the suspension category both in the AM and OEM. However, unless im missing something, their other brands seem to be on the back-burner a bit? Im not deep in the gravel or road space but Easton's stuff seems to be lacking much excitement for some time now. RC doesnt have the buzz it did before it was bought by Fox; and the footwear space has always seemed tough and with the boom/bust I cant imagine it's gotten any easier. Race Face has a hugely diverse product/sku lineup with protection, softgoods, tailgate pads in addition to their "traditional" line and lots of colors (=high sku count) which could be cashflow problematic during the past few years. They dont seem to be innovating much recently. The amount of OEM spec seems to be a tiny fraction of what they used to get as demand shifts from mtb to emtb and companies like ethirteen and Praxis seem to be the key OEM players for ebike cranks (when SRAM or Shimano producrts are not being used). The cockpit / rider contact category is susceptible to the "flavor of the year" issue and companies like Diety, One-up, and more seem to be solidly in that space now.
Not sure if the numbers from their other brands are split up to look at but it sure would be interesting.
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